Trump vs. Clinton: The long and the short of Canada’s stake

In Ottawa, as in all capitals, there are two files on the U.S. presidential race; one labeled Clinton and the other labeled Trump.

The Clinton file would be pretty brief and transactional, pointing to business as usual should she win the election in November and become president next January. NATO? Check. ISIS? Check. NAFTA? Check. TransPacific Partnership? Maybe.

The Trump file, at places such as Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Defence, would consist of all the scary and crazy things Donald Trump has been saying as the Republican nominee about American foreign, defence and trade policy.

A Clinton victory would reaffirm the geopolitical architecture of the post-war world, while Trump would repudiate many of the tenets that have shaped the West over three generations.

Aside from his observation that NATO might be “obsolete”, Trump’s comment to the New York Times last week that the foundational, all-for-one-and-one-for-all Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty may be pay-as-you-go raised even more panic among NATO members. “We have many NATO members that aren’t paying their bills…we can’t forget the bills, they have an obligation,” Trump said. This refers to the NATO members’ obligation to commit to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, which many countries, including Canada, do not.

What if Russia invaded one of the Baltic states—Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia? Trump would not commit to coming to their defence as NATO members, though the NATO treaty stipulates that an attack on one member is an attack on them all.

At last month’s NATO summit in Warsaw, Canada committed 450 ground troops and will command a 1,000-member NATO force in Latvia. NATO is sending the Russians a clear message—hands off the Baltic states.

But that’s not Trump’s message—not at all.

Again this week, Trump flashed an affinity for Vladimir Putin that has become such fodder to the Democrats that President Obama referred to it in his convention speech Wednesday night, saying of Trump, “He cozies up to Putin.”

At a news conference in Florida Wednesday, Trump was asked if he would recognize Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and lift subsequent sanctions, he replied: “We’ll be looking at that. Yeah, we’ll be looking.”

The U.S. hasn’t withdrawn from or renounced a trade agreement in 150 years. What would America’s word be worth in the world if it pulled out of NAFTA? Trump apparently couldn’t care less.

You can imagine how that played in Ukraine. The U.S., Canada and every NATO nation have roundly condemned the Russians for their occupation of Crimea.

But Trump sees the Russian strongman as a potential ally.

“I think Putin and I would get along very well,” he told the Times.

At his Miami presser he went even further: “I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there’s nothing I can think of that I would rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to the way they are right now so that we can go and knock out ISIS together with other people and with other countries.”

While he was at it, Trump invited the Russians, if they had hacked Clinton’s private email server, to turn over the 30,000 deleted messages to the FBI. This was Trump’s response to the WikiLeaks dump of 20,000 emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee. The FBI and CIA both believe two Russian security agencies hacked the DNC server.

“Russia, if you’re listening,” he declared, “I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded by our press.” Only later did he clarify his remarks, saying the Russians, if they had the Clinton emails, should turn them over to U.S. authorities, and that he wasn’t inviting them to commit a cybercrime against his opponent.

On NAFTA, Trump is saying the U.S. doesn’t hafta.

He has cited article 2205 of the 1994 trade agreement with Canada and Mexico that any of the three partners can leave after providing six months written notice. The U.S. hasn’t withdrawn from or renounced a trade agreement in 150 years. What would America’s word be worth in the world if it pulled out of NAFTA? Trump apparently couldn’t care less.

“If I don’t get a change I would pull out of NAFTA in a split second,” he told the Times. “It’s the worst trade deal ever signed in the history of this country, and one of the worst trade deals ever signed anywhere in the world.”

For NAFTA, successor to the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, the bilateral numbers are eloquent. Canada exported $397 billion of goods to the U.S. last year, while importing $363 billion. That’s 20 per cent of the Canadian economy in exports to the U.S., and it doesn’t include trade in services and investment. On the other side, Canada is the number one destination of exports from 35 states, and some nine million U.S. jobs depend on trade and investment with Canada.

Hardly a disaster, for either Canada or the U.S. More like; essential to the success and prosperity of both countries.

Trump has said that, with Mexico “we are losing on the border and we are losing on trade.” Does he really expect Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to sit down with him after him saying he would build a wall along the border, and force Mexico to pay for it, while calling Mexican immigrants to the U.S. drug dealers and rapists?

As for the TPP, forget about the deal — seven years in the making — negotiated among the U.S. and 11 Pacific Rim countries, including Canada and Mexico.
Trump has also threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization, calling it “a disaster”.

The WTO is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the rules-based referee of international trade. The U.S. can’t possibly walk away from either NATO or the WTO, but Trump is saying it can.

Justin Trudeau has quite properly and adroitly said he looks forward to working with whomever American voters send to the White House. As for the system serving him, it has an understandable bias for the short file on Clinton rather than the long one on Trump.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

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L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy, the bi-monthly magazine of Canadian politics and public policy. He is the author of five books. He served as chief speechwriter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from 1985-88, and later as head of the public affairs division of the Canadian Embassy in Washington from 1992-94.